Correspondent Blog

FDIC-insured “Problem Banks” list has been increasing over the past two years.  For the community banking industry (banks under $10B in assets), this is particularly troubling as the number of community banks earning negative return on equity (ROE) spiked to 237 institutions in Q1/24, or 5.71% of all community banks. Bank ROE is now a…

The average return on equity (ROE) for the banking industry declined to 11.10% in Q1/24 (a 23 percent decline in the last year). For banks under $10B in assets, ROE declined to 10.53% in Q1/24 (an 11% decline in the last year). The typical published analysis considers the industry in aggregate which conflates the challenges…

In discussing ERC (Employee Retention Credit) with banks over the last year, we discovered a common theme. Most banks have either been told they are not eligible or come to this conclusion on their own because they did not experience a decrease in revenues. Many banks performed better than expected during the pandemic due to…

Last week, Nacha held its Smarter Faster Payments Conference in Miami, a significant event for over 1,800 bankers and vendors. With 142 presentations and panels, the content was tailored to the needs of every bank interested in payments. The major themes of fraud, artificial intelligence (AI), expansion of instant payments, open banking, and regulation were…

On April 26, 2024, Republic First Bank (DBA Republic Bank) was seized by state regulators and the long running bank drama came to an end.  With the assistance of the FDIC, Fulton Financial acquired certain assets, debt and deposits of Republic Bank. This first bank failure in 2024 is reported to cost the Deposit Insurance…

Robert Wilmers, the CEO of M&T, used to write one of the best bank investor letters. With Mr. Wilmers retired, we are down to two “must read” letters: Berkshire Hathaway’s and JP Morgan Chase’s (JPM). We feel that as community bankers, we can learn from Jamie Dimon (Chairman and CEO of JPM) and from Warren…

The 2024 annual Consumer Banking Association conference (CBA Live) took place in Washington, D.C., over three days last week. Overarching topics (by word count and sentiment) include the imperative for greater consumer protection, the required more significant effort to fight fraud, rapid innovation (particularly in A.I.), and the need to keep evolving your workforce. We…

When it comes to bank planning, your strategic horizon has a huge influence on your success. Recently, we published a piece urging banks to set their strategic planning horizon out longer (HERE). We were inundated with questions and opinions. Our overarching point was that banks underperform, in part, because their strategic planning time horizon is…

One common question we field is recommendations of books to improve either bank performance or personal performance. Since many bankers likely have a self-improvement goal in their New Year’s resolutions, we wanted to put out our recommendations right from the start. To do this, we teamed up with Jack Hubbard, Managing Partner of the Modern…

Most market participants are focused on just one monetary policy tool available to the Fed – short-term, federal funds rates.  However, the other critical monetary instruments available to the Fed are quantitative easing and tightening (QE and QT, respectively).  While the Fed’s current actions on QT have been deemed long-term, slow-moving, and compared to watching…

You are likely in the process of finalizing your strategic plan. The good news is that strategy matters and your team’s time and effort in refining your strategy should pay off. The question is, how much will it pay off? That answer depends on the strategy your bank is pursuing and the underlying business model…

On September 20, 2023, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) left its benchmark rate unchanged, but it would be a mistake to conclude that the committee did not send a strong message about the projected path of future interest rates.  The FOMC revised its view on future projected interest rates – rates will be “higher…